


Almost is a six letter word

by ElixirBB



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, Happily Ever After, Multi, brief mentions of sex but nothing graphic, but like it’s kind of going to hurt to get there, cursing, for Plutt being a jerk, for Snoke being awful, rating is there to be careful, trigger warning for abandonment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:48:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24117502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElixirBB/pseuds/ElixirBB
Summary: Rey meets Kylo Ren before she meets Ben Solo.They’re the same man and she loves and hates both versions of him.Until she doesn’t.***********(Throughout the years, they almost had it all.)
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Rose Tico, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, others will be mentioned and alluded to
Comments: 54
Kudos: 122





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amalia Kensington (amaliak01)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amaliak01/gifts).



> I don’t think words can describe how much I love @Amaliak01. Like literally I don’t think anyone knows. Darling, light of my life, you have given me so much (the drawings, LORD, the drawings, your support, your help) and this is the least I could do for you. I hope you enjoy it. Don’t hate me too much. There will be a happy ending. 
> 
> This fic is loosely based on the poem by Nikita Gill (which is referenced further in the story). I say loosely because there will be a HEA. 
> 
> Just a note, there is time jumps and time skips and hopefully it should make sense. This is something new and honestly, I didn’t originally write it this way but then I scrapped everything and started over and suddenly came this whammy of a beast.
> 
> This being said, please enjoy!

She meets Kylo Ren before she meets Ben Solo.

Rey doesn’t know it yet, but this changes everything.

* * *

If Rey were pressed to answer (and she has been), she couldn’t really tell you how and when Kylo Ren appeared in her life. Just that one day he was.

And he stayed in her life.

Until he left her.

* * *

The truth is, Rey _can_ answer when he first came into her life. She just doesn’t like telling people.

She’ll tell herself that it’s intimate. That it’s something for her, for him, for them, to know. That it’s part of her past and Rey doesn’t _like_ talking about her past before Kylo so why would talking about Kylo, who is effectively part of her past, be any different?

Mostly though, Rey doesn’t tell people because she knows she’ll start crying.

(He promised her, that one day by the lake, their feet dangling in the warm water and the smells of summer, a searing memory in her senses, that he would never make her cry.

She should have known then that he would make a liar of himself and a fool of her.)

* * *

It goes like this:

The day is bright but cool. The autumn breeze twirling around and enveloping the city that Rey has come to love.

She’s in a coffee shop. It’s a Sunday and she’s putting the finishing touches on an assignment that should have been done earlier in the week but Rey still hasn’t gotten quite used to University and procrastination seems to be a thing that she’s trying to overcome but it takes time.

At least, that’s what Rose tells her.

So, Rey packs up her stuff and leaves her apartment to finish her assignment in the coffee shop close to the University and close enough to her apartment that she enjoys the walk.

The coffee shop is open early on Sundays, and Rey makes it in as soon as one of the barista’s flips the _Closed_ sign to _Open_. He gives her a small, tired smile and already starts getting her order ready.

She pays and then sinks into the spot in the back corner, plugging her earphones in and trying to understand why she decided to choose a major where one of her elective choices was to either suffer through thermodynamics or suffer through Russian Literature.

She’s lost in her assignment, lost in numbers and letters and the world she wants to live in someday, that she loses track of time. It’s only until her stomach grumbles that she realizes that she hasn’t used the bathroom since she sat down and should probably get up. The thing is, the coffee shop got significantly busy and Rey doesn’t know anyone.

It’s not like she thinks anyone will steal her stuff. It’s just that her stuff is all she _has_. She worked hard to save up the money for her shitty laptop that’s on its last legs. She worked hard to make sure that she had enough money saved up for her textbooks that cost more than groceries for two weeks. So, no, she doesn’t think anyone will steal her stuff but the thought is there.

The thought is _always_ there.

It’s a by-product of growing up in Jakku. Of fighting for what you have and _keeping_ it.

Fighting to survive. Fighting to live.

It’s a by-product of being left in a shitty little desert town where no one cared about the little girl with three buns in her and no one questioned why said little girl with three buns in her hair was staying with a man who had no right to be taking care of children.

In Jakku, no one cares if you survive.

They don’t care if you die either.

She sighs and turns her head.

There’s a man at the table next to hers. He’s tall and big, this much she can see. He takes up the entire space of his chair. He has a newspaper in front of him, pen tapping some rhythm against it. His hair is dark and long, curling slightly at the nape of his neck. He’s pale. _Porcelain_ , Rose would say. But he has beauty marks and moles patterned along his face and Rey has the sudden intense urge to trace constellations with her fingers on his face. She wonders idly, if he’s marked anywhere else.

She shakes herself from her thoughts and her movements make his eyes drift to hers.

He has dark eyes. Like chocolate.

Rey sucks in a breath. “Hey,” she says quietly, like she’s telling him some sort of secret, “I have to use the bathroom, would you mind watching my stuff?”

It’s a normal request. She does this at school all the time but Rey hates being a burden. She hates asking for things and hates owing people things.

The man nods. “Yeah, sure.” He goes back to his paper but Rey can see his eyes glance at her table every now and then.

Rey nods, gets up and then makes her way to the bathroom.

When she comes back out and makes her way to her table, she halts in her place. Because the man with dark hair, beauty-marked pale skin and brown eyes. has his hands on her textbook and is looking at it intently and then looking at her marked up answers on her notebooks.

“I said look after my stuff, not attempt to do my assignment.” She’s never really teased anyone before. Except for Rose. But Rose doesn’t really count. She doesn’t even know _why_ she’s teasing this guy. If anything, she should be pissed that he looked through her things and she _is_. It’s not that she isn’t pissed, it’s just the look of guilt that crosses his features and sheepish grin that stretches across his lips and shows off his dimples and slightly crooked teeth, makes Rey’s knees a bit wobbly.

“Sorry, it’s just…it’s been a while since I saw it and…what are you taking in University?”

“Engineering.” Rey answers, sliding into her seat. “I had to take an elective and it was either this or Russian Literature and I _really_ hate Russian Literature.” She frowns and looks down at her book and questions she’s supposed to answer but can’t seem to understand. “Though now, I think I should have just suffered through it.”

“I can help.” He says. The way he says it isn’t posed as a question but she thinks it might as well have been. There’s an inflection at the end of his words, as if offering to help her with her assignment isn’t something he does often. As if he’s testing the words on his mouth, shocked that they even spilled out.

“Could you?” Rey wonders. “I mean, you know this stuff, right? You’re not like…having me on or something?”

He shakes his head, hair falling on his forehead and Rey clenches her hands to keep from sweeping it to the side. “I actually…I have a Bachelor’s in Engineering. Then I switched out and did Law instead.”

Rey whistles. “Radical change.” He gives her a smile and it’s sad and lonely and twisted. There’s a story there, one that he obviously isn’t comfortable with and one that Rey doesn’t want to pry into. “If you could help me, that would be great.”

And so he does.

* * *

“I’m Rey Johnson, by the way.” She says before they get started, sticking her hand out to shake because it’s what people do, right?

He looks startled, like he thought she would stay a stranger. She can see the start of a flush on his neck. “Kylo Ren.” He puts his hand in hers and shakes it.

Rey thinks this is when she starts to lose herself.

* * *

When Rey gets up to leave, a couple of hours later, she spies the newspaper by his arm. He’s doing the crossword and it’s almost complete. She scans it from her vantage point. He’s still seated, as if this is what he does on Sunday mornings, just spend the day at a coffee shop. She supposes this is his version of relaxing. In the couple of hours that they’ve been bent over her textbook and then her notebook and finally her laptop as she types in her answers and hits send on the assignment she thinks her professor thought up from hell, she’s learned a little bit about him.

He’s a Commercial lawyer. He spends his days reading contracts and then destroying people who even thinking about walking back from their contracts. He sounds exhausted talking about his job and Rey jokingly tells him that maybe he should quit.

Which is the _wrong_ thing to say. Immediately, Rey sees the effect her words have on him. How he shuts down. How he becomes cold. How he becomes distant. Rey can only take fifteen minutes of this and then she places her hand atop his and ignores the electricity shooting up and down her arm. “I’m sorry.” She mumbles. “I didn’t mean it. It was…a joke. Tasteless, but a joke. I’m sure you’re great at what you do.”

There is some sort of longing in his eyes that tells her he’s thought about quitting, of going back to doing whatever he really wants to be doing but it disappears as quickly as it comes.

She can see the crossword now though, as she stands to leave, to put this day behind her. She can see the word. The one where she knows that as soon as he gets this it, the rest will follow quickly. The missing piece to the puzzle he spent God knows how long working on.

“ _Almost_.” Rey says.

He looks at her in confusion.

“16 across.” Rey explains, tilting her head to his crossword, after she’s wrapped her scarf around her neck and her backpack is secured around her shoulders. “‘ _Sad word, six letters.’_ It’s _almost_.”

His face is like a revelation when he finally understands what she’s saying. She finds herself hiding a smile in her scarf.

“Thanks for your help. Maybe, I’ll see you around.”

He nods slowly, his attention already on the crossword now that he has the word to piece everything together.

Rey doesn’t take it personally. Instead, she walks away and almost doesn’t look back.

_(Almost_.)

* * *

The thing about Rey, is despite being in engineering, she still has to take electives. And during her second semester of her first year, she takes an Introduction to English Literature class, which she thinks is way better than Russian Literature.

They discuss a lot of things in the class and Rey actually enjoys it.

One of the things they discuss is _foreshadowing_.

Looking back, Rey thinks her entire life led up to one big reveal, one big revelation, like the one on his face that fateful day in the coffee shop that she will sometimes refer to as theirs. She thinks that had she paid attention to the foreshadowing of her own life, she could have prepared for it.

But she didn’t pay attention to the foreshadowing in her life.

And the fall is all on her.

* * *

Rose is the one that brings it up to her.

They met the first day of classes and instantly connected and it feels _good_ to have made a friend. It feels good when Rose calls her up and texts her randomly and stays over on her shitty couch and doesn’t complain.

Rose likes to message her a lot and about various different things.

Two days before Rose starts her period (Rey knows this because Rose told her as she sent her multiple crying face emojis), Rose sends her a picture of a poem she found while scrolling through Tumblr when she should have been doing her assignments. Then she proceeded to tell her that she was _sobbing because it’s so true_ and _OMG, this is so sad, I’m heartbroken._

Rey reads it and there is a clench in her heart. Such simple words, with such poignant meaning and Rey gets it, the emotional _punch_ to the gut.

Rey replies, _yeah, it’s definitely really sad._

* * *

Rey doesn’t tell Rose, not until a handful of years later when her life is yet again upended by the same man going by a different name, that she memorized the little poem she sent a picture of in their first year of University because it struck a chord with her.

The little orphan girl who could have ( _almost_ ) had it all.

Rose, being the best friend she is, holds Rey while she cries and cries with her.

* * *

_The saddest word_

_In the whole wide world_

_Is the word almost._

_He was almost in love._

_She was almost good for him._

_He almost stopped her._

_She almost waited._

_He almost lived._

_They almost made it._

* * *

Rey would like to say it’s by accident that she goes to the coffee shop the following Sunday, but she would be lying. It’s not accidental. She gets there early. Early enough for the barista to flip the _Closed_ sign to _Open_ and she slinks in, heart beating faster than it normally does and orders her regular.

He comes in an hour after she does, that day’s newspaper tucked underneath his arm. His eyes are scanning the coffee shop and if Rey were anyone else, she would think that it’s just instinct to scan the room before going to order, but she knows it’s not. She knows because the first place he looks is in the back corner.

She gives him a wide smile from her spot in the corner the moment his eyes land on her and she watches as a smile, small and almost shy, crosses his face.

Rey’s heart speeds up and then calms itself, his mere presence a balm on an open wound she didn’t know she had.

This is the moment that Rey think she ( _almost, could, will_ ) loves him.

* * *

Rey doesn’t know it yet but this is the beginning of everything.

It’s also the end of everything.

(But Rey doesn’t figure that out until it’s too late.)

* * *

By the time Christmas rolls around, they’re dating. It’s tentative at first, almost awkward in a sweet way that has Rey’s stomach bundled in butterflies almost constantly.

By Christmas, she has a part-time job working at a bookstore that has a small coffee shop inside of it. It’s quaint here. Quiet here. Rey thinks she could get lost here.

She collects a small group of friends, there’s the married owners of the bookstore, Baze and Chirrut and with them come Bodhi, Jyn and Cassian (who are always Jyn _and_ Cassian or Cassian _and_ Jyn, there’s no differentiation between the two) and Kay.

On Christmas Eve, Baze and Chirrut close the shop early and they have a small party in the bookstore. It’s tradition between the group of friends who made each other family and Rey almost bursts out into tears when they invite her, quietly telling her that she’s _family now too._ She asks if she can bring her boyfriend and they don’t deny her request.

Kylo isn’t hesitant but he doesn’t like the holidays. She’s known this for a while. He sucks it up and meets her friends, having already met Rose a month before when Rose tagged along one Sunday and promptly almost talked his ear off. Rey hid a smirk in her hands at Kylo’s horrified expression at Rose’s penchant for offering too much information.

That night he’s quiet but polite. He’s distant but attentive.

Rey feels on edge the whole time.

(This is the first Christmas where Rey is surrounded by people who have become like a family to her. This is the first Christmas where she feels like she’s wanted and she doesn’t want to let that go.)

Kylo steps outside to take a phone call, giving her a soft kiss on her temple before grabbing his coat and answering his phone in a clipped sort of way that makes her stomach roll.

She doesn’t like who he is when work seeps into their time together and what it makes him become, but she doesn’t tell him that.

She hears Jyn hiss something to Kay and she hears Cassian try to stop him but Kay shakes his head and comes to stand next to her.

Rey _likes_ Kay, she does. He’s tall, almost as tall as Kylo, but where Kylo is built, Kay is thin, willowy even. His dark skin gleams in the light of the bookstore and his teeth are straight and white. His eyes an inquisitive grey.

Kay is also blunt, to the point that Jyn has had to resort to physical violence to get him to shut up. But Rey likes his honesty. She prefers it.

“That’s him, then.” It’s not a question, more of a statement.

Rey nods, body tense. “Yeah, that’s Kylo.” Her eyes stay on Kylo’s figure from the window. He’s pacing in front of the store, his hand runs through his hair multiple times and Rey knows that’s one of his tells. One of his quirks that he’s getting frustrated to the point of anger.

She’s never been witness to his anger, but she’s heard the beginnings of it.

“Jyn and Cassian have informed me that I shouldn’t tell you this but I’m not in the business of lying to people I know.”

Rey sighs. “I know you aren’t, Kay. What do you need to tell me?”

“It’s more what I think you _should_ know. Would you like to know the probability of Kylo Ren breaking your heart?”

Rey’s breath catches. The words are in her throat and she finds it funny because she doesn’t even _know_ what she wants to _say_ to him. So, she stays silent and watches as Kylo hangs up, huffs out a frustrated breath, sucks in some air, lets it out and then opens the door to the bookstore and makes his way back inside again.

“It’s high.” Kay tells her quietly, he’s not hesitating, Kay never hesitates, but he is careful in delivering the message he thinks she has the right to know. “Very high.”

* * *

When all is said and done and the dust has settled and Rey has cried all the tears she thinks are in her body and heaved everything she’s eaten in the past week, when Jyn and Cassian tell her that they can try and find him and threaten, when Bodhi makes her his mother’s secret cookies, when Baze and Chirrut give her as much space as she needs and make her as much tea as she can drink, Kay says nothing.

He doesn’t say _I told you so_ , he doesn’t sprout off probabilities of any kind.

Instead, the man who doesn’t like touching anything or anyone, reaches out with clammy hands and grasps hers, holding them tightly in his, anchoring her down in a sea of emotions she never thought she would feel again.

* * *

Rey is the first one out of the two of them to say _I love you_.

It’s just after she finishes her first year of University and she makes her way to his apartment, fully planning on collapsing into his large bed that holds too many memories for her, for him, for them.

(About her, about him, about them.)

She has a key that he gave her early on and shrugs when he tells her that she can use it for _whenever you want a better bed and a safer place to sleep._

She’d be offended if he weren’t right.

She shucks off her shoes and tears off her clothes, falling into his bed, closing her eyes and falling asleep to his scent that clings to his bedsheets.

She wakes up to noise in the room and she makes a startled croaking noise. She smells his cologne before she sees his shadow. He shushes her and tells her to go back to sleep and that it’s late.

She doesn’t though, instead, she waits until he climbs into bed, body weary and sighing with so much effort and tiredness, Rey feels it in her bones.

She shuffles closer to him, clinging to him, suddenly wide awake and she says the words without even thinking about it. “I love you.”

There is silence and Rey’s heart is beating wildly in her chest, a sinking feeling in her stomach when in the stretch of silence in the minutes that pass, nothing is said back.

She thinks this is _it_ , this is when he realizes that she’s just a nineteen year old girl who got in over her head with an older guy. She thinks she can get over it. She thinks that the heartbreak will hurt, it will sting but she will get over it.

Because Rey has survived worse than a heartbreak and she’s certain that she’ll survive more to come.

She makes to get out of bed, she wants to put back on her clothes, slide into her shoes and make the walk back to her apartment, that while shitty, is _hers_.

A hand wraps around her wrist and pulls her back gently, almost reverently. He kisses her forehead. “I know.”

* * *

They spend their days together, whenever they can.

They spend their nights together, swapping nights at her apartment and then at his.

There is a drawer of his things at her place.

She has half her closet in his.

And Rey, _hopeful_ , _happy_ , Rey, thinks that this could be _it_.

That she could finally be happy.

* * *

When she left Jakku, Unkar Plutt screams at her.

He tells her that she’s useless and hopeless and that she has no future.

He tells her that _no one_ will love her because not even her parents loved her enough to stay.

“You think leaving Jakku, you think leaving _me_ , you think leaving everything you’ve ever known will make you happy? You think you’ll meet someone and he’ll sweep you off your feet and you’ll be _happy_? You should know by now, girl. People like you, you’re _nobody_ and no one in their right mind could love a _nobody_. You’ll never be happy. You don’t _deserve_ it.”

She doesn’t listen to him. Instead, she gets into her car that she fixed and drives away from the desert town she held no love for.

* * *

She thinks of Unkar Plutt’s parting words to her more often than she should.

* * *

Before the beginning of her second year of University, during Labour Day weekend, Rey tells Kylo about her past.

She tells him about her parents, tweaked and spaced out. She tells him about the desert town they took her to and then left her in. She tells him about Unkar Plutt and his words and his wandering hands. She tells him of the fear she held in her heart, in her mind, in her body, everyday for years. She tells him how she used to sleep with a bo staff next to her bed because she was terrified of something happening to her.

She doesn’t mean to do it, but they’re at a lake house he told her he rented for the weekend. They’re sitting on the dock, their feet dangling in the warm lake water, the smell of barbecue permeating their senses, as the sky turns a brilliant shade of pink and orange as the sun sets.

She starts crying at the end, confessing to him that she’s _terrified_ that everything Unkar Plutt said was true. That she is a _nobody_ , that she doesn’t _deserve_ happiness, that she’ll _never_ be _enough_ , that she’ll always be left behind.

“I have this dream,” she tells him through her tears, “I’m screaming in the desert, just begging my parents, _anyone_ to _come back. Don’t leave, come back._ No one ever does. No one comes back and I’m always left alone.”

He pulls her close to him. She doesn’t realize that her body is shaking until his body envelopes hers and her trembling stops. He kisses the crown of her head and then he has her face in his hands and he kisses away her tears, one by one. “I will.” He breathes into her lips. “I’ll always come back for you, sweetheart.” He promises her the world, he promises that he’ll never make her cry, he promises that he’ll never leave her, that he couldn’t ever leave her.

Rey feels her heart soar and in that moment, she believes him.

(Rey thinks that this is what hurts the most.)

* * *

The days blend into months. Assignments blend into quizzes and then midterms and then exams and Rey is lost in a world of studying, working and Kylo.

Christmas comes and goes again and Rey expects to attend his work function. She watches him get ready for it, but an invitation isn’t extended to her.

Instead, he kisses her on the lips, tells her that he _won’t be too long_ and that _it’s a stuffy event that you’ll get bored at._

Rey doesn’t say anything. She ignores the rolling in her stomach and the way her throat closes and the way tears sting at her eyes.

Instead, Rey does what she’s best at. She does what she always does.

She waits.

* * *

Winter turns to Spring and Spring turns to Summer and Rose and Rey are at a beach, soaking up the sun while Kylo is away at a retreat his firm put on for the weekend. He tells her that _it’s going to be boring_ and that _you wouldn’t get along with anyone._

“But you’re not even giving me the chance to decide that for myself.” She says before she can think.

His back straightens, tenses and then he gives her a clipped smile. She’s seen it before, he uses it when people annoy him, when people frustrate him. He never uses it on her and she finds that it cuts her to her very core.

“You can stay at my place for the weekend.” He says, before he kisses her once on the lips and then he leaves.

She’s there for an hour before rage fills her body and then she leaves, opting to stay in her own apartment, away from everything that reminds her of Kylo.

Rose slowly but surely doesn’t ask her about him anymore. She doesn’t tease her about him anymore.

Instead, Rose gives her long looks, as if asking her if he’s _really the one that she wants to spend her time with_ , as if asking her if _he’s good enough for her_.

Rey gives Rose reassuring smiles, _it’s just a phase, it’s just work, I love him and he loves me._

“Has he told you he loves you?” Rose words are succinct and to the point, almost brutal in their honesty and she wonders if she’s been hanging out with Kay too much.

Rey hesitates. “Not in so many words but I don’t need the words. Actions speak louder, you know.”

Rose nods slowly. “They do.” She agrees. “But Rey…he hasn’t even introduced you to anyone he works with. Have you…I mean, have you met any of his friends?”

Rey falls silent, throat bobbing with pain that is so acute, so familiar it stings.

Rose must see her conflict, so she switches the topic.

* * *

When Rey’s throat is sore from crying, when her eyes are crusty with dried tears, when Rose stays at Rey’s apartment to look after her and make sure she showers and eats, a knock sounds at her door.

Rey doesn’t bother to hide her hope. She doesn’t bother to hide how she almost jettisons off the couch to the door, wrenching it open and hoping beyond all hope to see him on the other side, looking as dishevelled as she feels. When she sees who is on the other side of the door, she doesn’t bother to hide her disappointment. She doesn’t bother to hide her despair. Instead, she leans against the doorjamb and sighs tiredly, weakly. “What do you want, Hux?”

Rose appears next to her, eyes glinting hard. “Get inside, Rey.”

“What?” Rey asks.

Rose shakes her head. “Actually, you know what? Don’t bother. This won’t take long.”

Hux looks apologetic. He looks lost. He looks at Rose as if beholding her with his own eyes is a _gift_.

(And that _stings_ , God, does it sting because what Rey wouldn’t give to have Kylo back and looking at her like that. Like how he used to look at her.)

Rose pushes him further into the hallway and she closes the door behind her.

The door doesn’t stop the voice, the soundproofing thin, almost non-existent, in her apartment building.

Rose is nice. Rose is positive. Rose is the definition of bubbly. But the thing about Rose is that she is fiercely loyal and strong. She is everything that Rey wishes she could be.

This version of Rose though, is anything _but_ nice. She tears Hux apart. She doesn’t let him say a word. She accuses him of things that Rey isn’t even aware of. She calls him a _coward_ and she calls him a _fake_.

And then she hears the words that send her spiralling.

“Has he contacted you again?” Rose’s voice is hard and unforgiving.

Rey has the door open before she can even think. She stares at Hux who’s head is bowed low. Rey frowns, stepping forward. “He’s called you? He’s…Kylo’s called you? Has he…is he _okay_? Where is he? When is he coming back? Why hasn’t he called me? I don’t…I don’t _understand_.”

Hux doesn’t say anything and Rey can feel Rose’s anger. Rose crosses her arms and taps her bare feet, painted a neon green rapidly. “Tell her.” Rose says, all but demands. “Go on. Tell her. _Fucking tell her._ ”

Hux lifts his head and he looks pained, his eyes are wide. “Rosie, _please_.”

Rose snarls. “ _Don’t_. You don’t get to call me that anymore. Fucking _tell_ her and then get the fuck out of our lives.”

“Tell me what?” Rey’s almost frantic. “ _Tell me what_?”

In her heart of hearts, the one that she doesn’t think can break anymore, she thinks she already knows.

“He doesn’t want to talk to you.” Hux says, his voice is soft, his words gentle but cutting. “He’s…he’s done.”

_Done_. The word echoes in her mind, desolate and desperate. It’s a familiar word, one she heard from his lips before but she thought everything changed. Because he came back. _He came back_. But now she thinks it was only to leave again. _Done_.

With her. With them. With the life she wanted for them. With everything she _hoped_ for them.

“Okay.” She whispers hoarsely, unable to say anything else. She turns back into her apartment and walks to the couch, collapsing on it ungracefully.

She can still hear them in the hallway.

“Rose. Rosie, _please_. I didn’t –”

Rose cuts him off. “Hux, I mean this in every single way possible, _go fuck yourself._ ” There’s a slam of the door and footsteps.

Rey feels the couch dip and Rose leans towards her, head in Rey’s lap.

There are so many things she missed in her tunnel vision of anything and everything Kylo. She wants to tell Rose to go back to Hux, to listen to what he has to say because if Rey knows anything, it’s that Hux looked at Rose like she hung the moon and lit the stars. But Rose is loyal to a fault.

“I’m sorry.” Rose whispers.

“I’m sorry too.” Rey replies, hand in Rose’s black hair.

Rose starts crying then, huge gut-wrenching sobs that make Rey ache. “I wish…” Rose sniffles, “I wish I never met him.”

She’s talking about Hux, Rey knows she is.

But Rey can’t bring herself to say the same about Kylo.

* * *

They’re together for three years when Rey asks him to take her to his firm’s holiday party. They’re at her apartment eating takeout. He has a dumpling midway to his mouth and stills. He puts the dumpling down. “Why?” He asks her.

Rey frowns. “Because we’ve been together for three years and I haven’t yet met _one_ of your colleagues or friends. I don’t know _anything_ about the people in your life. For fuck’s sake, Kylo. I don’t know _anything_ about your _family_. Every time I ask, you switch the subject and I get it, I do, family is a touchy subject, but I just…” she’s getting frustrated and she runs a hand through her hair, a quirk she picked up from him. “I have given you everything, every part of me and you’ve given me nothing. I feel like you know everything about me and I’m still trying to _guess_ things about you.” She takes in a deep breath. “It’s lonely, Kylo, being the one out of this relationship who loves more than the other. I feel alone.”

There is a moment of silence. “You’re not alone.” He says the words slowly, as if they mean something else. As if there is a deeper meaning than what she’s understanding.

“Neither are you.” She reminds him. “I’m _here_. For you. You just…you need to let me in.” She looks at her food and for the first time in her life, her stomach churns at the sight of food, appetite lost. “I’m going to take a bath. You…just do whatever you want.”

She leaves him in the living room, television muted to some nature network as she makes her way to the bathroom, closing the door behind her. She sets the water to hot and watches as it fills the bathtub, adding in some bubbles and oils that Rose got her for her birthday earlier in the year. She undresses as the water fills and cuts off the water when it’s almost full. She sinks down and sighs at the sting of heat.

She must be in the tub for ten minutes before the bathroom door creaks open.

She stares at Kylo as he walks in, sitting on top of the closed toilet lid.

He tells her quietly about his family. About never belonging in a family built on laurels. How he always felt left out. He tells her about his mother who’s in politics and prefers to stay there. He tells her about his pilot father who liked chasing the thrill of his next job rather than chasing his son in a game of tag. He tells her about his gangly adolescence. He tells her about the bullying. He tells her about the anger he felt at always being left behind by the people who were supposed to care for him without a shadow of a doubt. He tells her about acting out. He tells her about the violence. He tells her about his uncle who was always high out of his mind, who found some sort of Scientology-esque religion that emphasized, peace and forgiveness. He tells her how his parents couldn’t help him, didn’t want to help him anymore and how they sent him there. He tells her about how his uncle almost poisoned him because he apparently wasn’t _listening_ , wasn’t _learning_ and couldn’t ever be what they wanted him to be. He tells her about the fight that ended everything.

He tells her about his emancipation and the man who made it all possible. The man who saved him. The man who made him who he was. The man who waited while Kylo did his engineering degree and then he decided to honour his mentor and switched into law.

He tells her what she always knew but that he could never admit, that Snoke isn’t who he thought he was and that he feels _torn_.

And finally, when the water has cooled, he bends down and tells her that he’ll take her to his holiday party but that it really _is_ stuffy and he doesn’t trust almost all of the people he works with, minus a few.

“I’ll bring Rose.” Rey says with a wry smile. “She can sniff out a douchebag a mile away.”

Kylo chuckles and then holds out a towel when Rey gets up.

Rey lets him dry her and then she lets him take her to bed.

She tells him she loves him over and over and over again. That he’s _enough_. That’s he’s _perfect_. That she’ll be with him no matter what.

She makes enough promises for the both of them.

(But that’s the thing with promises. They’re made to be broken.)

* * *

Rose is the one who suggests a fresh start, somewhere else.

“My sister is on the West Coast and she loves it there. I mean, I love it there whenever I’m there for the holidays. She’s willing to put us up for a couple of months until we find a job and get our own place.”

There is nothing left for Rey in the city she once loved, so she agrees.

She hasn’t been back to Kylo’s apartment since before he left so she leaves half her closet in the city she once loved and was loved.

* * *

Everything about _Palpatine & Snoke & Associates_ is monochrome. It’s all white and grey with accents of black and red. Rey feels overwhelmed and uneasy when she steps inside the glass building she sees almost everyday.

“Jesus.” Rose mutters at her side. “Talk about depressing.”

Rey stifles a giggle. She clutches Kylo’s hand and he grips back tightly. He’s been tense the entire evening, hardly saying a word to them, despite Rey’s attempt to coax him into a conversation.

Rose watches with knowing eyes, taking everything in, but she purses her lips and doesn’t say anything.

They’ve stepped out of the elevator, into an open concept room with floor to ceiling glass windows. Everything is ornate and expensive. The servers are all wearing black and white, hospitality smiles painted on their faces, despite the brush offs from the guests.

They’ve barely stepped through when they’re surrounded by three people. All of them are tall.

Rey blinks at their sudden appearance. There is a man with bright red hair and pale skin, a woman with long jet black hair and piercing green eyes, she’s all sharp cheekbones and red painted lips, her dress fits like it was made for her and Rey covertly tugs at her silk dress she found at a secondhand shop. Rey thought it was a steal at the time and Rose almost lost her mind when she saw Rey in it.

Kylo looked at her with dark, wanting eyes and Rey almost wanted to forget about the party and have him take the dress off of her.

The last woman is taller than the rest with platinum blonde hair and icy blue eyes, her skin so alabaster, so unblemished that Rey thinks artists would have a field day with her.

“Ren.” The man with the red hair states through clenched teeth. “You’re _late_.”

“Sorry,” Rose shrugs. “That was our fault. Can’t rush beauty, you know?”

Rey grins.

The man does not. Instead, he looks at Rose with disinterest. “Hardly conventional beauty.”

Rey bristles at the insult. Rose places a hand on her arm. “Because you’re a bundle of joy, right Ed Sheeran?”

Rey laughs loudly and slaps a hand over her mouth.

The brunette snorts and grins wickedly. “Oh, that’s a good one. We usually just call him our ginger-weasel. I’m using that one.”

The red-haired man glares at her. “You most certainly will _not_.”

The blonde woman shakes her head. “Now, Hux. You know once Bazine sets her mind to something, it’s a done deal.”

“Yeah.” The brunette – _Bazine_ – says, her smile is wide and insincere. “Kind of like all my _Closings_. A done deal.”

“As entertaining as this is,” Kylo cuts in, “this is…” He looks around, eyes tracking the people around them, “Rey and her friend Rose.” The omission of _what_ she is to _him_ , the slight against her, makes her breath catch. Rose’s hand tightens around Rey’s and her eyes snap to Rey, pressing her for an answer that Rey cannot give. “This is Bazine,” the brunette, “Phasma,” the tall blonde, “and Hux,” the redhead.

And she’s still _just_ Rey.

God. She shouldn’t have come. She shouldn’t have insisted. She feels dizzy. She feels weak. She feels…too much.

Hux turns his stare to Rose, “A rose by any other name.”

Rose snorts so loud, Rey is afraid she choked on air. “Real original, _Wills_. Is the accent real, or just for show?” She turns to Rey and pins her with an unreadable look. “I’m going to get a drink at the bar, do you want anything?”

Rey shakes her head, unable to formulate thought. Unable to say anything.

Rose’s eyes soften. “I’ll get you champagne anyways.”

“I’ll go with you.” Hux says as soon as Rose starts to leave.

“God, I really wish you wouldn’t.” Is Rose’s retort before she disappears into a crowd.

Phasma turns her head to Kylo. “Sheev wants to see you and I in his office, by the way.”

Kylo’s eyes are sharp. “Why?”

Phasma shrugs but her eyes belie her curiosity and apprehension. “I didn’t ask questions, Ren.”

Kylo turns his head to look at Rey and Rey gives him a tight smile. “I’ll be fine. I’m going to…I need air.”

She leaves before Kylo can and part of her does it so he can watch her walk away.

(For the years to come, she’ll wonder if that one action is what gave him the idea in the first place.)

* * *

She is on the balcony for no more than a few minutes when she hears rustling behind her. She thinks it’s Kylo or Rose. She turns around and comes to a stop. It’s not Kylo or Rose. Instead, it’s an older man, tall but hunched. His face is marred with old scars and burn marks.

She would feel sympathy at the obvious hard life he had if it weren’t for his eyes. They’re blue and cold. Empty. Hollow.

“So, you’re _her_.” His voice isn’t high but it’s not deep either. It’s somewhere in between but all Rey can think is that it’s _grating_.

“I’m sorry?”

The man snarls at her, any and all pretences shot. “Don’t act the fool. Girl. You’re Ren’s _whore_.”

Rey reels as if she’s been slapped. “I don’t know who the _fuck_ you think you are, but you can fuck _right off_.”

“Who I am? _Who I am_. Child. _I’m_ the one who made Kylo Ren who he is. _I_ am the only one who understands him. The only one he loves. And you are _nothing_ but a distraction. You’re _nothing_ to him. Just something to pass the time until someone more worthy comes along.” He sneers at her, “after all, what could an orphan girl with drug addled dead parents have to offer a man of Kylo’s caliber.”

Rey’s breath catches for the second time that night. Everything is fuzzy. She can barely see in front of her and Rey knows without a doubt, it’s because the tears that are burning her eyes.

She knows who he is without him even saying. _Snoke_.

She feels disgusting even being in his presence.

He walks towards her with a limp, cold hand gripping her, leaving his mark on her. She rips her arm away from him, barring her teeth. She promised herself when she left Jakku that she wouldn’t be made to feel worthless. That Unkar Plutt was the last man who would make her feel like _nothing_. Snoke’s eyes gleam. “Ah, such fire. Pity it’s a waste on someone like you.”

“You don’t _have_ him.” Rey hisses at him. “You never did. You’re a _placement_. You were convenient because you gave him what he wanted but Kylo will _never_ be _yours_ and you _know_ it.” She watches as his eyes widen and he takes a step closer towards her. Rey doesn’t let him. She puts a hand out and presses it against his chest, pushing him back. She doesn’t even care that he’s old. She just cares that he’s _awful_ and Rey is done with awful men in her life. “And that scares you. You’re terrified because you put so much time and effort into making Kylo who he is that you forget, he can make up his own mind. He can change it. He can _dispose_ of you when you’re no longer worth _anything_ to him.” She grins and it’s all teeth. “I may be an orphan. I may be parentless. But you know what I have that you don’t? _Kylo_. So go fuck yourself, you wretched piece of shit.”

She leaves before he can say anything else and she’s vibrating with anger. Vibrating with rage. Vibrating with hurt. She slams her way into the bathroom, hands shaking and vision blurry. She takes deep breaths, trying to calm down.

The door opens and closes but Rey doesn’t pay attention until someone is right next to her. Rey turns her head and sees Bazine. The brunette has her arms crossed and she’s staring at Rey with something akin to amusement and respect. “Heard what you said to the old man.”

Rey’s spine tingles. “I won’t apologize.”

Bazine chuckles. “I wouldn’t want you to. You’re right. He’s a piece of shit.”

“Then _why_ do you all still work here?” It’s something she mentioned once to Kylo and he balked. She remembers that first day in the coffee shop. It feels like forever ago.

It feel like yesterday.

Bazine shrugs. “We like the money it gives us. The power. The control. It’s all very addicting. But you…trade in your private life for that. We don’t bring our private life into work. We _can’t_. We’d get eaten alive.”

“By Snoke?”

“By all of them.” Bazine is looking at her with intense eyes through the mirror. “It’s a small price to pay. At least, that’s what we thought but it gets to you after a while. How you can’t bring your significant other to parties without them getting raked over the coals, without them being belittled and then they look at _you_ , with such mistrust, with such contempt that they can’t do anything but believe you’re like them and they inevitably leave you because you traded your soul for money and you won’t go against the partners. You have to hide your relationships. You can’t have friends, only acquaintances because everyone is after everyone’s job.” She shrugs and it looks like such an inelegant gesture on the brunette. “It’s what we’re used to that we forget that sometimes, we’re the only ones like this. That we can’t trust anyone but ourselves in this place.”

“You guys seem close.” It’s not overt but Rey has made a life out of reading people and she can see through the barbed insults, the relief in their eyes when the four of them are in each other’s presence. She sees the knowing eye rolls, the secret conversations that no one other than them seem to understand.

Bazine gives her a slight grin. “We knew each other in law school.”

Suddenly, Rey can picture it. Bazine, Phasma, Hux and Kylo, stalking the halls of their law school. She can see them studying together. She wonders who fell for who. If anyone fell for anyone. Rey looks at herself in the mirror, studying Bazine at the same time. Bazine is beautiful.

Bazine is everything she isn’t.

The doubt creeps into her mind. It threatens to eat her whole.

Bazine’s face softens, as if reading her thoughts. She digs into her purse, clutching something Rey can’t see until she’s fixing it on her ring finger on her left hand. A diamond glitters brilliantly and a matching wedding band sits beneath it. “Ren isn’t my type.” Bazine says softly, trying to pacify her because all she can hear, all she can think is that she’s not _worthy_ , that she’s a _poor orphan with dead parents_ that she didn’t actually _know_ were dead and Kylo is _Kylo_. “Phasma is.”

“You’re married to her.” Rey breathes and then it clicks. “Snoke doesn’t know. _No one_ does.”

“No one except Ren and Hux. They were there at the wedding.” She takes the rings off and puts them back in her purse. “I wasn’t kidding when I said this place sucks out your soul. It takes everything you love, everything you could _ever_ love and it poisons it. Phas and I take separate cars, we arrive at different times, we have different people as our emergency contacts, so no one can link us. It’s tiring but at the end of the day, I have her and they can’t take that away from me. They can’t take her away from me because we don’t let them. I have my humanity _because_ of her _in spite_ of this place. Hux has his dalliances and his extravagant vacations.”

“And Kylo?” Rey asks, her voice hoarse.

Bazine winces. “Kylo almost lost himself. He almost…became everything we promised ourselves we wouldn’t become.”

“You said _almost_.” Rey catches on, heart thumping. “What happened?”

Bazine gives her a smile and it’s as sincere as she thinks Bazine can make it. “ _You did_.” She pats Rey on the shoulder. “You saved him, whether you realize it or not and whether or not he admits it. He makes a lot of mistakes but you are not and will _never_ be one of them. Never doubt that.”

Rey nods and watches as Bazine disappears out the bathroom door.

After a couple of minutes, Rey follows and makes her way to where Rose is standing, her lips going a mile a minute, talking to Hux who looks at her humorously, captivated by her.

Kylo joins them a minute later, standing close enough to her so that she feels his heat. “Want to get out of here?” She says out of the corner of her mouth.

He sighs with relief. “Yes.”

Rose peers at them. “I’ll get a ride with _Daddy Warbucks_ here.”

Rey grins. “Shouldn’t he be _Annie_?”

Rose chortles. “Have you _heard_ this guy talk about his vacations? He’s definitely _Daddy Warbucks_.” Hux grows as red his hair and Rey shakes her head at the two of them.

“Text when you get home?”

Rose nods and gives her a kiss on the cheek and a slight wave to Kylo.

Rey follows Kylo down the hall, nodding at Phasma and then Bazine.

All the while she can’t shake the feeling of someone watching her.

She feels like she can’t breathe right until she’s in Kylo’s car and they’re driving to his apartment, away from a world she was never meant to belong in. 

* * *

“I met Snoke.” She tells him that night when they’re in bed.

She can feel him stiffen. “What did he say to you?”

“Nothing I haven’t heard before.” She takes a deep breath. “Did you look into my parents?”

“Yes.” He doesn’t deny it. He doesn’t offer any explanation.

“Without telling me.”

“I didn’t want to get your hopes up.” There is silence. “But you know already. You always knew.”

Rey closes her eyes, ignoring the stinging. “I’m no one.” She breathes into the night, a mantra of a broken girl in a desert town. “I’m nobody.”

“Not to me.” Kylo tells her. “Not to me.” He sighs. “It’s hard but you have to kill your past to get to your future. You just have to let it die.”

“I don’t know _how_ to kill it. I don’t know how to let it die. It’s who I am.” She pauses and hesitates at the words that are begging to be released. She knows she shouldn’t say them but she _does_ because she’s been biting them back for _years_. “And I don’t think you believe that. That you have to let the past die, that you have to kill it. Because I don’t think you’ve killed your past. I don’t think you _can_ because despite what you say, your family is part of you. It’s who you are and you can run until you reach the edge of the world, but you can never get rid of it.” She can’t face him, not even in the dark. “And that’s _okay_. It doesn’t make you weak. It doesn’t make you unworthy. It makes you _human_.” She takes a deep breath. “You don’t _owe_ Snoke _anything_ , Kylo. You can be whoever you want to be. Despite what he says, he isn’t the one who made you. _You_ are.”

They don’t say anything else and instead, they just stare at the ceiling, breathing each other in, close together but so far apart.

(In the years to come, Rey will wonder if her words were what set everything in motion.)

* * *

Before she boards the plane to start a new life, she calls a number she knows off by heart but promised herself she would never call again. It rings and rings and rings until it goes to voicemail like she knew it would.

Her voice isn’t as strong as she wants it to be when she hears his voice. “You want to be done? Fine. We’ll be done but you should know that you’re the one who broke me first. And I don’t know if I can forgive you for that.”

* * *

She caves in the months, the years, to come.

She’ll call that familiar number over and over again and listen to the same voicemail over and over again.

She’ll leaves messages. Some of them are mean. Some of them are accusing. Some of them are desperate.

Almost all of them beg him to _come back._

( _Almost_.)

* * *

Another year passes and it’s Christmas again. This year, Rey doesn’t attend Kylo’s firm’s holiday party but they do go to the bookstore with her makeshift family.  
  


Except this year, everything is spiralling. Everything is wrong.

He’s distant. He’s agitated. He’s snappy.

He loses his temper at Kay when Kay makes a snippy comment. Hand slamming into a bookcase and it gives underneath his weight, everything collapsing, his voice deep and twisted as he tries to rend Kay apart with his words.

There is a beat of shocked silence when he’s done. Rey jumps up and pulls him away but not before Jyn lunges, anger blazing, fists outstretched, ready to strike him for what he said and did. Cassian pulls her away, tells Rey to _take him and leave until he cools down and then come back._

“ _No_.” Jyn snarls, looking at Kylo with daggers in her eyes. “He’s not welcome here anymore. Rey, I love you. You are always welcome here. You will always have a place with us, but if I ever see him again, I’ll fucking _tear him apart_.”

Rey ushers Kylo out of the bookstore, sprouting shaky apologies to Baze and Chirrut who stare at her worriedly.

“What is _wrong_ with you?” Rey yells as soon as they’re outside. “What the _fuck_ were you thinking? How could you say that to _Kay_? How could you say that to _anyone_? How could you do that to the bookstore? Jesus Christ, Kylo. What the hell is happening to you?”

“You wouldn’t understand.” He snaps.

“Because _you’re_ not letting me _in_.”

He looks in pain. He looks torn apart. He looks tired. “Because I don’t _want_ to!” He explodes and Rey reels back in shock. She reels back in hurt. She hears the door open behind them and she can feel Jyn’s presence at her back. “You keep nagging at me to be a better person. You keep trying to _change_ me. You keep saying shit that doesn’t apply to me. I’m _not_ a good man, Rey! I’m fucking not. And you…you…you live in this fucking plane of existence where everything is split between good and evil, right and wrong. But you’re just…God, Rey, sometimes you’re so fucking _naïve_.”

She can’t breathe. Her heart feels like it’s splitting in two. It feels like she’s drowning.

“I’m just so damned _tired_ , Rey.”

“Of me?” She asks and she hates that her voice is broken. She hates that she’s shaking. She hates that she has to lean against Jyn because if she doesn’t, she’ll fall. She’ll break.

He doesn’t look at her, “Of you. Of me. Of this. I’m just…I’m done.” He runs a hand through his hair and then he leaves.

She blinks. “ _No_.” Her voice is scratchy. Her voice is pitched. “Come back and tell me that to my face! Tell that to my face! You’re a _coward_ , Kylo!” She keeps yelling, her throat raw and sore, Jyn’s arms are around her, holding her in place, when all she wants to do is run after him. “You’re a coward!” He’s at his car when she starts panicking, “Come back. _Please_. Kylo, _come back_. Please. Don’t go.” Her voice breaks. “ _Please, come back.”_

He jolts to a pause, as if her words are a weapon. As if she pierced him with them. They mean nothing though, he still gets into his car peels out of the parking lot and when Rey can’t see it anymore, she breaks.

* * *

Jyn calls Rose who is visiting her sister on the West Coast for the holidays and tells her everything when Rey cannot.

Rose books an earlier return flight and is there the next day.

It’s the first holiday season that Rey and Rose spend together.

It’s the first of many where Rey can’t stop crying.

* * *

She hasn’t heard from him in months.

She has her final semester of University left and she hardly has time to breathe, let alone cry for the man who left her alone.

Rose does her best to keep her spirits up. She tells her quietly that he’s still in the city, that Hux sees him in the office.

Rey shakes her head and buries herself in a textbook.

* * *

She starts going back to the coffee shop on Sundays.

He never comes.

* * *

“Have you ever been in a serious relationship?” She asks him once at night, when the sweat on their bodies has cooled down.

There is a pause. Silence. “Yes and no.” He answers, tightening his hold on her. They’re in bed and she’s curled around him, head pillowing on his chest. “I’ve been in relationships before but they’ve never been serious. Just a mean’s to an end.”

He talks about his so callously. As if being with something intimately isn’t giving part of you away. As if being in a relationship isn’t surrendering yourself to another person for them to do with you as they wish. “Is that what I am?” She wonders. He’s told her multiple times that everything Snoke told her that night is a lie. He’s proved it to her multiple times over but she can’t help it. His words, like Unkar Plutt’s, play like a broken record on her mind. A searing concerto she never consented listening to. “A mean’s to an end?”

“No.” His reply is quick but Rey knows Kylo by now. She knows his tone of voice, she knows the cadence of it. She knows the words he chooses are calculated and thought out. “You’re not. You’ve...become _everything_.”

She peers up at him, giving him an unsure smile. “You’re everything you me too, you know.”

“I know.” He replies. He kisses the top of her head and Rey closes her eyes, drifting off to sleep. But not before she hears, “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

* * *

“So how did they end?” She asks the next morning. “The relationships that were just a mean’s to an end?”

There is a pause. Silence. She can see him stiffen and then he turns his head, giving her a smile that is hollow and empty. His eyes are imploring, empty in a way that sorrow flits in and Rey is taken aback by the meaning in them. By the intensity in his expression, begging her to understand something she can’t even begin to comprehend. “Self-sabotage.” He answers. “It’s always been for the best. Leave them before they could leave you.” It echoes what Bazine told her in the bathroom and Rey’s heart _hurts_. Not just for Kylo but for all of them.

“I won’t.” Rey promises him with vicious intent. “Leave you. I won’t.”

Kylo closes his eyes, as if she’s given him the wrong answer and everything around him wearies him. “I know.”

There is silence. A pause. And everything is left unsaid.

* * *

Rey is finally done with school and she collapses into her bed when her last exam is done.

She sleeps until she’s woken up by a series of knocks.

She walks to the door groggily, doesn’t bother looking through the peephole, expecting it to be Rose.

She almost keels over in shock when she sees Kylo.

“What are you doing here?” She asks.

He steps into her apartment, closes the door, locks it and kisses her as if she’s his lifeline. As if she’s the only thing keeping him afloat.

_It’s like riding a bike_ , she thinks, _how instinctive it is to pick up where we left off._

She’s missed him. She’s missed everything about him.

His smile. His laugh. His hands. His hair. His mouth. His voice. She misses the way he holds her.

He’s leading her to her bedroom and she knows that they should talk. That they have _so much_ to talk about but nothing comes out. Nothing she’s imagined she could say to him makes any sense, in this moment. She forgets everything.

Everything except, “I love you.”

She’s not expecting anything from him.

So it shocks her when he tells her, “I know. I love you too.”

* * *

Throughout the night, he tells her he loves her over and over again. There isn’t one part of her body where he hasn’t whispered the words, tattooing them with his breath.

(Rey should have realized it then, what he was doing.

Saying goodbye.)

* * *

She wakes up, sun shining in her face, almost blinding her with its warmth (later she’ll realize how ironic that is. Later, when she’s cold and alone and feels as if her heart has been ripped out.)

She reaches out to the other side of the her bed to find the space empty. She frowns but isn’t surprised. He’s an early riser. He likes to sometimes run in the mornings. He’ll come back.

Except, later comes and goes and he’s not back. She takes the two coffees she made, one for her (black with a splash of cream) and one for him (black with honey), and hurries out the door, deciding to catch him at work, despite how much she hates it there.

But she loves him.

Like he _loves_ her.

She thinks back to the softness in his face, the all-encompassing _something_ in his eyes, the way he breathlessly told her he loved her too.

She doesn’t think time will dull how much she still hates _Palpatine & Snoke & Associates_. She hates the way it feels so clinical. So empty. So monochrome. She reaches the reception desk and grins in surprise at Bazine who is down there, speaking quickly and quietly with one of the receptionists and security guards. She calls out Bazine’s name and almost falters in her step when Bazine turns around and stares at her, confusion flitting over her face and then abject horror, as if something has suddenly become clear.

Rey feels her stomach clench.

“Hey Baz.” Rey starts, putting Kylo’s tumbler on the desk. “Just dropping this off for Kylo. He wasn’t there when I woke up so I figured he came in early and I thought I’d bring him coffee, since I’m officially done with university. You know how ornery he gets if he doesn’t have his coffee.” There is a tense silence around them. The receptionist looks everywhere _but_ at Rey and the security guards are looking at the shoes.

There is a sense of foreboding in the air, something that clenches Rey’s insides.

Bazine opens and closes her mouth before she clears her throat. “Rey...did...do you _not_ _know_?”

There’s that feeling again. The clenching. The doom. “Know what?”

Bazine doesn’t break eye contact. “Kylo...he quit. Got into a huge fight with Snoke. He’s _gone_ , Rey.” She frowns. “Did he not tell you? I thought…he said that he was going to make things _right_ with you. We’ve been…he’s been a _mess_ without you these last few months. I thought…he said that he wanted a life with you, away from this.”

She doesn’t say anything, she just fumbles with her phone in her purse because she’s been _so_ stupid. He’s probably called her a dozen times, probably left her a dozen messages. Except, when it illuminates, there’s _nothing_. No missed anything.

She dials his number off by heart. Bazine doesn’t touch her, seems to know not to, and Rey is grateful because she is shaking. Trembling all over.

It’s like Christmas all over and Rey likes Bazine but what she wouldn’t give to have Jyn behind her. What she wouldn’t give to have Rose behind her.

The phone rings and rings and rings. And then goes to voicemail.

She has listened to his voicemail almost a hundred times. She’s memorized his words, his tone of voice, the cadence of it, everything. But this time, it’s _different_. It’s not his regular message.

_Rey_...it starts and there is a breath, a shaky sigh, as if he’s holding back tears, _I’m sorry._

And then the _beep_.

It’s out of instinct that she leaves a message. She’s always hated when people call and don’t leave a message. He knows this about her. “You told me you loved me. You told me you would never leave me. That you would always come back. You…you told me _you loved me_.” And she’s crying the tears she knows he held back in his message. She’s crying the tears she’s been wanting to cry since the day she first met him in the coffee shop. She hopes that when he hears it, if he ever hears it, he recognizes her sobs. He recognizes the absolute gut-wrenching mess he made of her.

She hangs up and turns around. Her eyes meet Bazine’s and she looks so sad for her, she opens her arms and Rey doesn’t hesitate. She steps into them and cries.

It hits her then, this all encompassing loneliness, the fear she always had, the fear she told him about, the same fear he promised he would never bring to life. Except he did.

“He left me.” She cries. “He left me.”

Bazine doesn’t offer any platitudes, she just holds her tighter.

* * *

Paige’s house is by the beach on the West Coast.

Rey leaves the Tico sisters to catch up and she makes her way to the wharf, standing at the edge.

“Come back.” She whispers. “Come back.”

No one answers her.

And she is how she always was, alone.

* * *

When she makes her way back into the house, Paige is doing a crossword and Rose is rummaging through the fridge.

“Hey,” Paige calls out. “‘ _Synonymous with nearly, 6 letters.’_ Nothing I’ve tried works.”

Rey’s throat tightens. “ _Almost_.” She croaks. “Try _almost_.”

Paige’s cheer is victorious.

Rey closes her eyes.

* * *

Rey meets Kylo Ren before she meets Ben Solo.

And they almost had it all.


	2. Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh wow! You all!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH! Seriously, I cannot thank you enough for your kind words and appreciation. I really hope you like the final chapter. 
> 
> @Amaliak01 YOU ARE MY LIGHT. YOU ARE MY BAE AND I LOVE YOU LONG TIME. I hope you’ve enjoyed this journey.

Rey meets Ben Solo after she meets Kylo Ren.

She doesn’t know it yet, but this changes everything.

* * *

Almost exactly two years after she moves, Rey runs a 10k.

There is a city-wide marathon that _Rebel Limited_ runs and sponsors every year. It’s a huge fundraising event and a team building exercise. Some people run the 5k, some, like Rey, run the 10k. Others, like Rose, decides to run the half-marathon and others like Poe run the full marathon.

Rey thinks they’re out of their fucking mind but she joins in anyways.

She regrets every single moment. She knows that Finn regrets it too. They’re not even one kilometre into their run when Poe breezes by them, blowing a kiss to his boyfriend.

Finn groans. “God, don’t you just hate him?” He’s panting, a smile on his face despite his words.

“He’s such a happy asshole.” Rey comments, grinning through her pain.

She should have stretched more. She should have not had a big breakfast.

She should have done a lot of things.

Like not sign up for this race.

By the time she’s done with her race, she walks, on wobbly legs to where _Rebel Limited_ have set up their camp, where the people who didn’t sign up are lounging and handing out water and sports drinks to their coworkers, congratulating them and giving them granola bars and yogurt and whatever else is in the cooler.

Rey is bent at the knees, trying to catch her breath and trying to quell the nausea in her stomach.

She can hear Leia and Han in the distance, but everything is foggy. Everything is blurry and Rey is cognizant enough to know that sweat is getting into her eyes and stinging them.

“…Rey.” There is a pause and Rey is still rubbing her eyes, unaware of awaits her. “Rey? Honey, I want you to meet my son.”

Rey stops rubbing her eyes. Her son? Her _estranged_ son? The one who didn’t contact them for almost ten years? The one who abandoned Han and Leia? The son who they still love and have cried over and talked about with such raw emotion that it once brought tears to Rey’s eyes, because God, what Rey wouldn’t give to be that loved, _that_ son?

(She was loved like that, once. At least, she thinks she was.)

Rey opens her eyes, squinting against the sun and the harsh sting still in her eyes.

Then she finds she has to look up. And up. And up.

When Rey finally realizes what, _who_ , she’s looking at, she thinks she stops breathing.

He looks the same. A bit more filled out, which she didn’t think was possible. His hair is still long. He’s still pale but not unhealthy. He doesn’t have bags under his eyes. And speaking of eyes, his are still a chocolate that makes her weak in the knees. His beauty marks and moles are still the same and Rey knows that if she wanted to, she could trace constellations out of them.

(She knows this because she _has_.)

He doesn’t look shocked to see her. He looks sheepish. He looks guilty. He looks awkward but he doesn’t look surprised.

Leia nudges him, as if he’s being rude, and Rey wants to laugh because Leia doesn’t even know the half of it. She doesn’t…know. Of course she doesn’t. No one does. No one except Rose who hasn’t said a thing to anyone.

He sticks out his hand. “I’m Ben. Ben Solo.” As if they’re strangers meeting for the first time. As if she didn’t spend four years loving him and memorizing his every single feature and facet. As if she didn’t love him with every single fibre of her body.

He’s looking at her like he’s begging her to understand.

But Rey _doesn’t_ understand and she thinks she’s delirious.

Rey has been the definition of professional ever since she moved here. She knows it’s unprofessional to allow her personal life to seep into her work life, so she hasn’t allowed that to happen. Until now, when the choice is _taken_ away from her. Because she’s staring at the man who, after all proclamations and promises, made her miserable, who made her question her very worth, who built her up to be _something_ only to tear her down when he did the one thing he promised her he would never do.

When he left her.

“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking joking me.”

_(How did we end up like this?_ She thinks. _In this space of hurt and despair that even breathing is painful._

_How?_ She wonders. _When we…_

Almost made it.

Almost had it all.

Almost loved each other enough to stay.)

Rey grows cold on a hot summer day. She feels all the blood rush out of her body. Everything blurs, her vision, her sense of sound, her sense of smell, everything. Instead, all she feels is a rolling in her stomach, so she does the only thing she can do in that moment.

She pitches over and pukes over Kylo Ren’s – Ben Solo’s – shoes.

(Rey is not a petty person. She’s _not_. But God, that felt good.)

* * *

It doesn’t take long for Rey and Rose to find jobs.

Some of Paige’s friends are engineers and work for a start-up engineering firm that is looking for new hires. Paige can’t promise them anything but they take the opportunity to make connections.

Rey and Rose spend the night perfecting their CV’s and cover letters.

They hit send to to all the e-mails they have open, after checking and double checking and then lean back in the kitchen chairs, the moonlight enveloping them in its bright light.

They don’t say anything.

They just give each other tired smiles.

Neither of them mention the unshed tears brimming in their eyes.

* * *

There are times, the breathtaking moments in the most horrible of ways, that remind Rey that she isn’t the only one who left everything behind.

That she isn’t the only one who got her heart broken.

* * *

They take her to the medical tent even though she tells them that she’s _fine_. The nurses in the tent take her temperature, they ask if she can feel her extremities, what did she eat this morning?

She tells them all the answers she can give because she can’t exactly tell them what she wants to tell them, can she?

_I’ve been depressed for the past two years because the man I fell in love with left me after he fucked me and told me he loved me, only for him to come back, today of all days with a different name and life. The man I’m still in love with, because who am I kidding, I never stopped, apparently lied to me about who he was, about everything, for four years and I was none the wiser. So I’m stressed. I ran this stupid 10k, I ate too much this morning and I think I might actually have sun exhaustion?_

She _does_ actually tell them about the sun exhaustion part because she thinks that might be important but the rest? She doesn’t say anything. Instead, she takes the cool compress they give her and puts it behind her neck as she lays down on a vacant stretcher in the shade and closes her eyes, willing the tears in her eyes to go away.

A few minutes later, she feels a presence looming over her. She doesn’t even have to open her eyes to know who it is.

But she does. Open her eyes. Because Rey is glutton for punishment.

“Rey.” He says and his voice is so soft, so distraught, so guilty that it makes the tears that have been pooling in her eyes spill over. “I’m sorry. I’m so…I’m _sorry_.”

She lets out a laugh and it’s a dark, brittle, lonely thing, encompassing all of the heartbreak she’s felt for the past two years. “Yeah, so I’ve heard.”

He winces. “I just…” he trails off, biting his lip and turning his face to look away from her.

She lets out another laugh and this one is hollow because he can’t even _face_ her. “Leave me alone Kylo. Or _Ben_. Or whatever the hell your name is.”

“It’s whatever you want it to be.” He says it earnestly, as if her calling him by anything _other_ than his given name is an option.

“I want you to leave me alone.” She flips to her side, turning her back on him and instantly regrets it because the nausea is back.

It’s an excuse, the nausea. She instantly regrets turning away from him because it hurts to _not_ look at him. To not feast on the face she couldn’t even bear to look at in her camera hidden under a password protected album on her phone because she never thought she would be able to see him again. But he’s _here_. Now. Except, he’s not, is he?

She doesn’t know _who he is._

And if she doesn’t know who he is, then how can she be sure about who _she_ is? About who and what _they were_?

When she feels him leave, she turns back around and watches as he walks away, his bare feet sinking in the grass.

* * *

One day, back when she was on the other side of the country, when everything was fine and the only future that awaited them was one where they were together, Rey and Kylo go on a hike.

Rey regrets it. Kylo smirks at her, hand outstretched whenever she trips over tree trunks and shrieks and swats at bugs that shouldn’t even exist.

They get to the top and Rey stops, breath stalling. It’s _beautiful_. The sky is blue, the water is blue and they’re so high _up_ that she can feel the breeze and smell the saltwater. It’s beautiful here, in this moment of stillness.

She bends over and unlaces her hiking boots, taking off her socks and sinking her feet into the grass, curling her toes to feel the soil. She looks over at him, smiling. “You should take your shoes off.”

He shakes his head. “No, thank you. I prefer to keep my shoes on.”

“It’s freeing.”

“It’s asking to get bitten.”

Rey rolls her eyes and thrusts her arms in front of him, placing back down by her sides after a moment. “This whole entire hike was a giant _ask_ to be bitten. It feels good, after all that walking and climbing.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t like the feel of grass beneath my feet. It’s weird.”

She snorts. “You’ll have to take off your shoes one day and feel the grass beneath your feet. I mean, what if you spill something on them? What if someone pukes on them? What if your sole rips?”

“That’s what water is for, to rinse them off and if my sole rips, I’ll survive the walk back to my place or a store and buy a new pair.”

Rey rolls her eyes. “It _does_ feel freeing, you know. Feeling the grass beneath my toes and being one with nature. I’ve never…I’ve never seen so many colours and everything feels so _alive_ here. So untouched. And I don’t even really like nature.”

“You like the sun.” Kylo counters.

Rey gives him a smile and it’s small and a little sad. “Circumstance made the sun and I become allies.”

She pulls on her socks and laces her hiking boots again. Once she’s upright, Kylo pulls her close to him, their bodies sticky with sweat from their hike up. She sinks against him, the same way her toes sank into the grass.

It feels freeing. _Alive_.

The past, however cruel it was to them and the future, whatever it holds for them, fades to nothing, and all that’s left is just a sweet soft breeze, enveloping them in hope.

* * *

Rey thinks about him walking barefoot in the grass all day and she wonders what made him change his mind.

It’s a maddening thought, one that sends her careening into her kitchen table, but she wonders if it wasn’t so much a _what_ made him change is mind, but a _who_.

And oh, _oh_ , she never…that never…oh.

_Oh_.

And the hope that she clung to in her darkest of nights and darkest of times, all of the things she’s imagined in her head should she see him again, fade to nothing.

* * *

Rey used to dream about what she would say to Kylo when and if she ever saw him again.

She imagined throwing herself into his arms.

She imagined kissing him and forgiving him.

She imagined slapping him.

She imagined yelling at him.

She _always_ imagined crying.

Which is why she’s not surprised when she does just that when he leaves her for the second time, this time, after she _tells_ him to leave.

(The thing is, Rey imagined all of the different ways she would react to Kylo when and if she saw him again, she’s a little surprised why she never thought she would end up being so sad.)

* * *

_Rebel Limited_ , with their slogan _we are the rebellion_ , ( _all lower case, because we’re not pretentious,_ is what Poe tells her one day when they’re at happy hour and he’s drunk off his ass) prides itself on new age technology. They pride themselves on being different from their competitors. On being modern, on shattering records and glass ceilings.

Rose takes to working there like she was always meant to be there. The moment she steps into the lab, Rey knows that Rose is home.

Rey likes working there. She likes her co-workers. She likes her job. She likes working with her hands and fixing things. She’s _lucky_ , to have found a job this quickly. She knows this.

But there are times, in meetings, on the way to work, on the way home, throughout the day, where Rey gets lost in her thoughts, where Kylo infiltrates her mind and she closes her eyes, hoping against hope that the gaping hole in her heart will heal.

It doesn’t.

* * *

She meets Finn the first day she works at _Rebel Limited_. He has a bright smile and is assigned to show her around. He doesn’t stop talking but Rey doesn’t mind.

“So,” he says with a grin that shows gleaming white teeth. “Got a boyfriend? Cute one?”

She’s startled by the question and looks at him in shock, the sudden pain of everything that’s happened in the past few weeks (months, years) must be evident on her face because his grin fades and he looks horrified.

“Fuck. I’m sorry. I didn’t…mean to.”

She blinks rapidly, trying to control her breathing and emotions. “You didn’t…you didn’t know. I’m not…it’s a new thing and I’m not ready for…” she takes a deep breath. “You seem like such a nice guy-”

He cuts her off laughing and waving his hands. “No. Oh God. _No_. I’m gay. It’s just…I was just trying to make conversation. Which is a stupid way to make a conversation. Poe, he’s my boyfriend by the way, he works here too, always said that I would one day stick my foot in my mouth because of that question. Looks like my reckoning is finally here, huh?”

She gives him a tight smile and thinks that he has no idea about reckoning.

* * *

Leia comes to see her the Monday after the marathon. Rey is still sore, both body and mind but she makes her way to work regardless of the temptation to stay in bed and call in sick.

“Hi honey.” The thing about Leia is that she doesn’t like making scenes. For someone who was in politics and then started an engineering firm with her husband and other childhood friends, she doesn’t like the spotlight on her or on anyone she cares about anymore.

So, this is why she thinks Leia corners her in the bathroom during lunch when no one is in the office.

It’s the way she _looks_ at her. The way her eyes soften and fill with something that’s almost pity but more like sympathy and maybe even empathy.

It doesn’t take long for Rey to connect the right dots. “You know.” She croaks. “For how long?”

Leia gives her a smile and it’s a sad one (God, everything is so _sad_ now, everything has _always_ been so sad and it just…it makes Rey so… _sad_ ) and Rey’s breath is stolen because she’s _seen_ this smile before on her son. “I figured it out the second week I hired you. I was…in contact with Ben then. I mentioned you and he…he pieced it together and then I did.”

Rey closes her eyes. “You _knew_ this whole time.” She counts to three, trying to find some semblance of calm, some semblance of _something_ she can hold onto to keep her afloat. “Why didn’t…why didn’t you _tell_ me? All I ever wanted to know was that he was safe.”

And it’s true, when the everything abated, when her tears dried up, all Rey wanted to know, all Rey _ached_ to know was that wherever he was, he was safe and happy and whole.

“Because honey, he had to leave you to save himself.” There’s a pause, as if Leia is expecting Rey to say something.

But all Rey can do is grip the sink with clenched hands until her knuckles turn white and stare at her reflection in the mirror.

(She looks so _sad_ here.)

* * *

It’s not that she didn’t want him to save himself.

It’s not that she didn’t want him to break free from Snoke and the firm and be _happy_.

It’s just that she thought she would help him.

It’s just that she thought _she_ could make him _happy_.

* * *

When she gets back to her desk, she googles the _thesaurus_ and tries to find synonyms for sad, because she thinks that she needs to expand her vocabulary to include something other than that little three letter word that has haunted her since childhood.

There are good words, she’ll admit that.

_Dismal._

_Melancholy._

_Forlorn._

_Woebegone._

But she thinks they’re missing one.

It’s a simple one. Six letters.

_Almost_.

* * *

She takes the rest of the day off, shutting down her computer and leaving the building in a rush.

She almost makes it home before she starts crying.

( _Almost_.)

* * *

Paige asks them to reconsider moving. She has enough space and rooms that they can stay with her, no problem.

Rey can see that Rose is conflicted because for as much as Rose loves her, Rose loves her sister more.

So, Rey tells her that she has no problem looking for a single bedroom and if she wants to stay with her sister than she is _no position to stop her, nor does she want to stop her because she’s family, Rose._

Rose looks at her with wide eyes that are slightly confused and then slightly sad. Not for herself but for Rey. “Yeah, but so are you.”

Rey is taken aback, because she knows that Rose thinks of her as family. She _knows_ this.

It’s just that sometimes, Rey forgets that.

(Rose does end up living with her sister after Paige begs.

They help Rey move into her new studio apartment close to the beach because Rey finds that she loves the water and the calm it offers her. How it makes her feel alive.

After they’re gone, Rey collapses on the couch, listening to the silence of her apartment and takes a deep breath.

She is how she started out, alone.)

* * *

When Rey makes it back to her apartment and finally calms down and stops crying, she calls Jyn to talk to her. To ask for her opinion. To try and understand how she’s feeling and why.

Jyn isn’t the one who answers though, it’s Kay.

The moment she hears his voice, Rey bursts into another round of tears. She blubbers about God knows what. She tells him about how she’s so angry and pissed and _sad_ but every time she thinks about him all she wants to do is find him again. Every time she sees Leia or Han, all she can think about is how they have his smile or jaw, not the other way around.

“I’m tired, Kay.” She says. “I’m tired of being alone and heartbroken.”

He’s silent and then he clears his throat. “ _He called us, you know.”_

That was not what she expected him to say. “What?”

“ _Kylo. Though, I suppose he rightfully is Ben Solo now. He called us after he saw you again. And by us, I mean me but then Jyn found out and grabbed the phone from me and started yelling. But he called and apologized and he said some things.”_

There is a pause and Rey becomes impatient. “Well, what did he say, Kay?”

_“I believe that is something he should tell you for himself.”_ He sucks in a deep breath. “ _It would mean more, coming from him.”_

Which she thinks is ridiculous because he’s not going to talk to her again. Not after she turned him away. Not after he’s become someone else and she’s still stuck as the only version of herself that she’s ever known. “Tell me something.” She asks him quietly. “Anything, just…tell me something.”

_“Would you like to know the probability of you being happy again?”_

Rey lets out a watery chuckle. “Sure.”

“ _High. Very high_.”

She sucks in a deep breath. “What about the probability of being happy with Kylo?”

She hears Kay sigh over the line. “ _With Kylo Ren? Non-existent.”_ Rey closes her eyes and feels the sting, feels the tragedy of heartbreak unfold all over again. “ _However, you being happy with Ben Solo? Rey, that is very very high.”_ He says this softly, gently, voice full of meaning and determination.

* * *

The first Christmas in her new city is the hardest.

Everything is different. From the weather to the atmosphere to the parties.

Their holiday party is at Leia and Han’s house, which is more like a mansion than a house but Rey walks in and stays an hour, watching everyone mingling and watching couples gravitate to one another.

She sees Rose in the midst, holding her own amongst their coworkers. She looks determined. She looks like she belongs here in this city of bright lights and endless beaches. She looks like she’s putting her life back together successfully.

More than once, she wishes that she could be strong like Rose. But she isn’t.

She grabs her jacket, shrugs it on and leaves the house with the twinkling Christmas lights behind.

(She used to love Christmas.

But she thinks that she just liked celebrating it with Kylo.)

* * *

She doesn’t see him for a couple of weeks and Leia doesn’t bring him up again.

Some of her other coworkers do. She overhears Kaydel mentions that he’s _handsome_ and that maybe, just _maybe_ , she has a shot.

And that comment, no matter how offhandedly it was made, feels like a stab in the heart. Because she doesn’t _know_ if there was anyone else. She thinks about it regularly but she doesn’t actually know. And the _not knowing_ she thinks may actually be _worse_ than _knowing_.

Did he hold anyone else the same way he held her? Did he kiss anyone else the same way he kissed her? Did he touch anyone else the same way he touched her? Did he listen to someone else the same way he listened to her?

Did he love someone else the same way he loved her?

Or did he maybe love someone more?

Someone that convinced him to reach out to his parents. Someone that made him comfortable wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Someone that persuaded him to feel the grass beneath his feet, despite him not liking it. Someone that convinced him to come home.

(Someone that isn’t her.)

* * *

She makes her way to a coffee shop close to her apartment one Sunday morning a few weeks after he makes a reappearance in her life. She has her laptop and a book and she plans on spending the day at her favourite table by the window overlooking the beach.

She’s in the middle reading her novel when she hears a throat clear.

She lifts her head and stares at him, mouth agape.

He has a newspaper tucked under his arm and his free hand is fiddling with a pen.

“Want to help me with the crossword?”

She blinks. Once. Twice. Three times. And then she takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly and nods. “Okay.”

He takes the seat next to her and unfolds the newspaper, placing it between them, smoothing it with hands that she remembers intimately. “Okay.”

It almost feels like normal.

( _Almost_.)

* * *

They spend almost the entire morning tackling the crossword. She laughs at some of what he says.

He chuckles at her facial expressions.

He won’t let her use the internet because _that’s cheating._

He tells her some things but not everything. Nothing of importance.

She’s proud of herself that she doesn’t stand up and demand he tell her everything. Because, even though the thought kills her, she recognizes that it’s no longer her place to know that.

Rey checks the time and decides that she should go home and meal prep her week’s lunch and snacks.

She’s shuffling her things in her bag, slinging it over her shoulder when she pauses and looks at him, fingers gripping the back of the seat she just vacated. She _knows_ she doesn’t have the right to him and his thoughts anymore, she knows this, but despite knowing this, it still doesn’t stop the question from leaving her mouth. It still doesn’t stop the desperation from _needing_ to know. “What are you doing here?”

It can be interpreted many different ways. _What are you doing in the coffee shop? In the city? For a job? For fun?_

“I’m teaching.” He tells her and there is something loaded in his look. “At one of the Universities. Thermodynamics.”

She bites her lip and runs a hand through her hair. She gives him a smile and it’s thin but genuine. “That’s…that’s great. Do you…” _like it? Enjoy it? Still love me?_ “Remember it?”

He sucks his bottom lip between his teeth and then releases it. “I remember it all.” His eyes are boring into hers, as if imploring her to understand, imploring her to stay.

She nods, body trembling, hands gripping the strap of her bag tightly. “That’s good…that’s…I’m happy. For you.”

And then she leaves, because that’s all she knows how to do.

It’s what she watched him do.

* * *

There are five stages of grief and Rey has felt all of them.

She has gone through the denial ( _he’ll come back, he will)_ , anger ( _he left me, he promised he wouldn’t ever leave and he did and I don’t think I can ever forgive him for that),_ bargaining ( _I’ll do whatever it takes but just bring him back into my life, please_ ), depression ( _I can’t breathe, I can’t think, I can’t move without feeling this overwhelming sadness that threatens to swallow me whole_ ), and acceptance (a small nod and a confession, _that’s good…that’s…I’m happy. For you._ )

Out of all of them, she never thought acceptance would be the one to hurt the most.

* * *

They find a new normal that’s very reminiscent of their _old_ normal.

Every Sunday, they meet at the coffee shop close to her apartment and they go through the crossword, finding words that shouldn’t fit but do.

* * *

A year and a half into their job, Rose is required to go back to their old city for a conference. She tells everyone that she’s excited and she can’t wait for the conference and it’s _true_ because Rose is an engineer at heart and she really does _love_ conferences but Rey can see the hesitation in her eyes.

“Do you ever miss him?” Rey asks her the night before she leaves and Rose is crashing at her apartment because Rey offered to drop her off at the airport early in the morning.

Rose doesn’t even bother pretending not to know who Rey is talking about. Her back stiffens and her shoulders sag. “Yes.”

It’s a simple word, three letters and Rey can feel her heart constrict for her best friend.

“You know,” Rey says carefully. “I would have been okay with you and Hux being together. Kylo left me but Hux…he came back for you. You were the first person he thought about.”

“He _lied_ to me.” Rose snaps. “About a lot of things but he lied to me when he told me that Kylo loved you and wouldn’t break your heart. And then he told me after Kylo left that he talked to him and the message he wanted to pass onto you and I just…I _lost_ it because who the fuck does that? Who? Who aides that cowardice?”

“He was being a friend to Kylo.” Rey reminds her. “The same way you’re a friend to me.”

Rose snaps her mouth shut and she sighs, shaking her head. There are a few minutes of silence between them. “Do you still miss him?”

Rey doesn’t even bother pretending not to know who Rose is talking about. “Yes.”

It’s a simple word, three words and Rey can still feel her heart constrict.

* * *

One Sunday, in the middle of autumn, after they do the crossword, and he’s in the middle of grading midterms and they sit in comfortable silence while the world still goes on normally around them, unaware of the history of pain and heartbreak between the two of them, Rey clears her throat. “Do you still talk to Hux?”

Ben – and she’s used to calling him Ben now, it’s crazy how the name suits him better- snaps his head up and after a moment, he nods. “Yes.”

“You should tell him that he should come out for a visit.”

“Why?”

Rey shrugs. “Because Rose, despite what she says, still misses him. And because someone should be in love without it hurting.”

He looks at her with wide eyes and Rey looks everywhere but at him. After a moment of silence, Rey stands, slipping on her jacket and grabbing her bag. “Good luck grading the midterms.” She moves to leaves when she finds a hand clasped around her wrist. She looks down at the hand and then at Ben.

“Does it?”

“Does it what?”

“Does it hurt when you love?”

Rey blinks and sucks in air. She gently pries his hands off of her. “It never used to but now all it seems to do is hurt.”

She leaves the coffee shop and almost doesn’t look back.

( _Almost_.)

* * *

She picks Rose up from the airport after she comes back from the conference and the moment Rose sees her, Rey opens her arms and embraces her.

“I saw him.” Rose says, her voice muffled by Rey’s shirt. She pulls away and sighs. Her eyes look bloodshot.

“How’d it go?”

“Fine. It was fine. Everything is fine.”

“Rose.”

Rose bursts into tears in the middle of the _Arrivals_ and people glance at them. Rey doesn’t pay any attention to them. Instead, she hugs Rose back to her and holds her tight.

“I think I still love him and it hurts.”

“I know. I know.”

* * *

It’s Rey’s third Christmas on the West Coast and Rey’s first with Ben Solo.

The holiday party isn’t held at Han and Leia’s anymore. This year, it’s held at the pub _Rebel Limited_ employees love going to. The party is in full swing and Rey finds herself gravitating towards Ben, who is standing in the corner, nursing a beer and listening half-heartedly to something Kaydel is saying. After a while, Kaydel shrugs and makes her way to another group of people.

He looks at her when she slides into the space next to him. “Hi. Happy Holidays.”

He nods. “You too. Do you…do you have any plans?”

Rey shakes her head. “Probably just going to sleep in and watch movies. Maybe go to the beach in the afternoon, just for a walk.” There’s a pause. “What about you? Any plans?”

He nods at his parents who are, for a lack of a better word, _wasted_. “Spending the week with them.”

“Yeah, of course. It must…it must be nice. Being back with them.”

She sees the way his fingers grip his glass tighter. “Some days are better than others, but…we’re getting there.”

“Good. Great. That’s…I’m happy for you.”

“I know.” Ben says softly and it amazes her how she can still hear him over the din of the pub but she’s always been in tune to his voice, to his cadence, to his words. “You’ve told me before.”

Before she can say anything else, he lifts his head and nods at the front door.

Rey turns around and a shock of red hair is bobbing through the crowd, eyes scanning and wheeling a suitcase behind him. Rey’s eyes are scanning the crowd too, trying to find Rose. Rey spots her the instant Rose spots the red-head.

She sees Rose elbow her way through the crowd until she stops in front of him.

Rey cranes her head, trying to see. She can’t hear anything but she can see Rose gesticulating. She can see her mouth fly a mile a minute. She can see the tears brimming her eyes. She sees the way Hux lets go of his suitcase, the way his mouth moves, and she doesn’t have to hear him to know what he’s saying, because he’s repeating the same words over and over again.

_I love you. I’m sorry. I love you. I’m sorry. I love you._

She can see the way he grabs her face, gently, reverently, and she can see the way he kisses her, like she means the world to him.

Rey turns her face away, unable to bear witness to such an intimate and important moment. Her eyes catch Ben’s and Rey thinks she stops breathing.

“Do you think they’ll be happy?” He asks.

“Someone has to be. It might as well be them.”

He lets out a frustrated sigh and runs a hand through his hair. “And what about us?”

Rey’s heart stutters. “What _about_ us?”

“Fuck, Rey.” Ben says, “I don’t know what _else_ to _do_. _What about us_? When is it _our_ turn to stop hurting? When is it our turn to be _happy_?”

Rey reels back and shakes her head. “I don’t…I don’t know if…we can. You _left_. Ben. _You. Left. Me._ And I still don’t even know _why_.”

It’s like someone spilled cold water on him, it’s as if someone told him where to find secrets of the world, the way the realization that he hasn’t let her in, the way he hasn’t told her _anything_ , slams into him. “Rey. Fuck. I’m…I’m…”

“ _Sorry_.” Rey finishes for him. “Yeah. I _know_. You told me.” She turns on her feet, grabs her jacket and purse hanging on one of the chairs and makes her way out of the holiday party.

(She thinks she imagines it because there’s no way she could hear it over the din of the pub, but she’s always been attuned to his voice, to his cadence, his words, so she thinks she hears him when asks her to _come back. Rey, come back. Please. Please._

Rey keeps walking.)

* * *

One of these days, she thinks she’ll stick around for the entire holiday party, but not this year.

* * *

Six months into living on her own, Paige wants to set her up with one of her friends.

“He’s really sweet, Rey. His name is Snap and he just got out of a relationship and he’s been feeling like shit and I just think that you two would be perfect for each other.”

Rey tries to decline but Paige won’t take no for an answer, so one Saturday night, she finds herself at an Italian restaurant with Paige’s friend.

And the thing is, Snap _is_ funny. He makes Rey laugh. They have interesting conversations and they like the same things. She likes talking to him. But there’s nothing there.

As luck would have it, Snap feels the same. “I’m really happy we get along and I can use another friend, if you’re willing to be my friend but…you feel more like a sister than anything.”

The relief is instant. “I would love to be your friend.”

(Paige is upset that her match making didn’t work but Rey pats her on the shoulder and tells her that it’s _fine_ , that she’s _fine_ , that everything is _fine_.

Rose snorts from her position on the couch but doesn’t say anything.)

* * *

Snap doesn’t have family to spend Christmas Day with, so when he calls Rey up to ask if she wants to go for a walk, Rey says _yes_.

She’s in boots and sweatpants and a jacket, but she’s still cold and Snap laughs at her before rummaging in the back seat of his car and throws one of his sweaters at her to wear underneath her jacket.

She looks like a slob but she doesn’t care. They’re walking on the boardwalk and Rey is listening to Snap retell a memory from when he was a kid.

She’s in stitches by the end of it, wiping tears from her eyes.

They lapse into silence after that, back to the wharf and leaning against the railing, the cold breeze in their face.

“How are you doing, Rey?”

She gives him a small smile. “I’m doing good.”

He nods and wraps an arm around her shoulder, pulling her into him. “You sure?”

“No. But I’m going to get better. I have to.”

“You know, you’ve been saying that since I first met you. How’s that going, by the way?”

She rolls her eyes and sinks deeper into his body warmth. “Wasn’t aware you were keeping tabs on me.”

“I wasn’t aware your ex-boyfriend was back in town.” He gives her a look when she gapes at him. “I was at Paige’s a little bit ago and I overheard Rose and the red-head, _Arnold_? Something like that, talking.” He pauses as they walk back to his car. “So, why don’t you tell me about what’s _really_ happening.”

It’s like an avalanche. Suddenly, all Rey can do is talk about Kylo actually being Ben Solo. All she can talk about is how he left her and everything that happened years ago. All she can talk about is how Leia knew and how she’s known since the beginning. All she can talk about is how she meets him on Sundays and everything feels so normal but she’s still so fucking _heartbroken_.

All she can talk about is how she’s afraid, so terrified, that she’ll be stuck in this state of perpetual sadness.

After all of that, Snap asks, “So, what are you going to do?”

“Nothing.”

“Rey.” Snap says. “Come on.”

“He doesn’t want me.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I just do.”

“But _how_?”

“Because he left. He _left_ me, Snap. He fucking _left_. After all of his promises of being there for me and after everything he knows about me, he. Just. Left.” She disentangles herself from under his arm and she stands in front of him, the saltwater air whipping her in the face. It’s cold. So _cold_.

The way Snap looks at her is kind and gentle because that’s how he’s _always_ been with the girl who had her heart broken so bad she doesn’t think she could ever be put back together again. “But Rey,” he says slowly. “He came back.”

“For himself. For his family. Not for me.”

“ _Maybe_ he came back for his family, _maybe_ he came back for himself,” Snap concedes, “But Rey, he _knew_ you were here this whole time and if he wanted nothing to do with you, he wouldn’t make the effort to see you every Sunday. He wouldn’t have called _Archibald_ – “

“ _Armitage_. But everyone calls him _Hux_.”

“Whatever, it’s a _weird_ name. Anyways, he wouldn’t have called _Hux_ if _you_ didn’t ask him to. Rey, he may have come back for other reasons but he also came back for you. Because you’re here.” She doesn’t say anything and he sighs. “Rey, come on. What’s this really about? Is this actually because he left you or is it something else?”

She looks up at him and wipes at her eyes. “He made me feel loved.” She admits. “He made me feel important and he made me feel like I deserved to be loved and deserved to be happy. He made everything that was ever said to me when I was at Plutt’s fade away, like they were nothing but a nightmare. And then…when he left without saying anything, when he told me we were done, via Hux by the way, he _hurt_ me and suddenly…” She trails off.

Snap lets out a breath and nods in understanding. “You didn’t know what to believe anymore.”

“Yeah.” She nods. “I just…” She lets out a sigh. “I just want to be loved, Snap. By him. By any version of him.”

Snap pulls her into a hug. “Then let yourself be loved, Rey.” He kisses the top of her head. “Merry Christmas, kiddo.” There’s a pause. “Hey, I know this is like really shitty timing but do you think you can introduce me to the blonde you work with. Kaydel?”

She snorts and shoves him away. “God. You’re such a _guy_.”

* * *

There isn’t anything open on Christmas Day but there is a hole in the wall Chinese place that’s open and Rey and Snap duck in there and order way too much.

But she laughs and he laughs and the conversation doesn’t stop.

And Rey thinks this is the normal she’s always wanted.

* * *

Neither she nor Snap, see the tall figure dressed in black, with long hair curling at the nape of his neck, moles and beauty marks that when traced, would make constellations jealous, and eyes. Chocolate eyes so warm they make Rey weak in the knees.

They don’t see Ben Solo look the way she’s looked for the past few years (decades, her entire life), sad.

* * *

“ _Did you hear_?” Bazine asks her on the phone, one week before Kylo, who she’ll be introduced to as Ben Solo, comes back into her life. She and Baz talk almost monthly. Rey ignored her text messages for first two months when she first moved, until Baz called from an _Unknown Number_ and promptly _ripped_ into Rey for ignoring her and proceeded to tell her, _whether you like it or not, I’m calling you every month so we can talk and you better fucking answer my text messages._

“Hear what?” Rey asks as she putters around the kitchen, putting the phone on speaker as she cooks dinner.

“ _Palpatine & Snoke & Associates has gone under new management. Police came and arrested Snoke and Sheev.”_

“For what?” Rey isn’t surprised, she thought it would only take some time until karma came for them.

“ _Corruption. Extortion. Harassment. Money laundering. You name it, they did it. Police have all the evidence.”_

Rey hums, “Wonder how they got it.”

There is silence on the other line and she can almost imagine Bazine pursing her lips and rolling her eyes. “ _You’re not stupid, Rey. You know exactly how they got it.”_

“I wouldn’t know,” Rey says through gritted teeth, “because I have no idea where he is or what he’s been doing. And I don’t care to know.”

Bazine lets out a laugh. “ _You should have been a lawyer. You’re getting better at lying through your teeth.”_

“Baz.” Rey says tiredly.

“ _Rey_ ,” Baz says seriously, “ _some things are bigger than us. Some things are worth breaking promises in the now if it means the future is a better place.. And taking down the two men who have made hundreds of people’s lives miserable, who have made threats against loved ones and have made almost everyone that works for them live in fear, that’s bigger than broken promises. Rey,”_ Baz’s voice is soft, it never usually is, but Baz is talking to her like she’s telling her a secret, _“He did it because of love.”_

“What?”

Baz sighs and she murmurs something, likely to Phasma, “ _When you see him, and you will see him, ask him what Snoke said to him that made him quit. Ask him what made him do what he did. Just fucking talk to each other. I swear to God, you two are the worst at communicating.”_

* * *

It’s that time between Christmas and New Year’s, where the days blend together until she can’t tell her Wednesdays from her Fridays. She’s eating takeout on her couch, watching some benign show on Netflix when there’s a knock on her door.

She sighs, getting off her couch and makes her way to her door, wrenching it open without looking through the peephole.

She almost topples over when she sees him on the other side of her door. He looks dishevelled, as if he hasn’t been sleeping properly. It’s a stark difference from when she first saw him _again_.

“Ben.” She says in surprise. Because she is surprised to see him. “What are you doing here?”

It can be interpreted different ways. _What are you doing at my apartment? In the city? What are you doing here with me?_

“Can I come in?” He sounds defeated and it pierces at her.

She moves to the side and gestures him inside, closing and locking the door behind him.

He’s standing in the middle of her living room, eyes tracking her surroundings as if he’s searching for something, for some kind of proof that she doesn’t know exists.

“I thought you were spending the week with your family.” Rey says after a few minutes of awkward silence and when it’s clears that he’s not saying anything.

“I was. I am. It’s…we’re getting there.” They lapse into silence and Rey wrings her hands together for the mere purpose of having something to do. “I didn’t know.”

Rey frowns. “Didn’t know what?”

“That you were seeing someone.”

The words shock her so much that she laughs. “ _What_?” She shakes her head.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Rey blinks and then everything clears and she’s… _what_? Angry. Hurt. She’s _something_. “First off, I’m not seeing someone and even if I were it wouldn’t be _any_ of your business because secondly, you left me. Remember?”

He shuts his eyes and scrunches up his face. “Yes.” He says through gritted teeth. “Of course I remember. I can’t fucking _forget_ it.”

“That’s on you then. Not on me. You screwed up and when you left you screwed _me_ up even more. For God’s sake, Ben. You told me you _loved_ me. I was in your bed all night and you told me you _loved_ me and then you _left_ me. You left me and the only thing I had of you was your stupid voicemail that I stupidly continued, in my weakest moments, to call and leave you messages. So, why do you think you still have the right to know anything about my life?”

“Because I still love you. _I love you_ , Rey. I never stopped. You were on my mind throughout everything. Every single day. It was you. _Always you_.”

The thing with Rey, is that she has wanted to hear this for _so long_. She never realized _how much_ she wanted to hear it until the words were spoken. But even now, post his confession, she still feels angry, she still feels hurt, she still feels disappointed but the thing she feels intensely, the emotion that courses through her veins in this exact moment is tiredness. She’s _tired_.

Tired of being angry, tired of being sad, tired of being disappointed, tired of being heartbroken. She’s just _tired_.

She sits on the couch, all but collapses on it and leans forward, so her elbows are on her knees and she looks at him, at this man who effectively was a stranger to her until he wasn’t. She stares at this man who she once knew intimately, standing in the middle of her living room still looking uncomfortable. And that _hurts_. It really hurts because Rey doesn’t want him (Kylo, Ben, whatever version of himself he wants to be) to be uncomfortable in her home. Because despite everything she’s feeling, everything she’s felt in the past two years, she still loves him. She would still do anything for him.

She remembers the last conversation she had with Bazine, (which reminds her that she really _should_ call Bazine to check in), _when you see him, ask him what Snoke said to him that made him quit. Ask him what made him do what he did._

“Why?”

He looks at her inquisitively.

“Why did you do what you did? Baz…I talk to her by the way, we talk on the phone once a month and she messages me almost every second day, she said that when I see you, I should ask what Snoke said to you to make you quit, to make you leave, to make you do whatever you were doing for the last two years. So, what was it? Why did you do it?”

_Why did you leave me?_

_Why did you promise me the world and not deliver?_

He sucks in a deep breath. She can see it and hear it. Sees the way his chest lifts with the inhale and goes down with the exhale. She can hear the little hissing sound air makes as he breathes in. He takes a seat on her armchair that she uses on nights she wants to be comforted, on nights she wants to wrap herself in a blanket with a cup of tea and get lost in thoughts and memories of him, of her, of them. “He threatened you.”

Rey blinks. “What?”

“Snoke. He threatened you. He said…God, Rey. The _things_ he said, the things he alluded to, the things…I felt sick to my stomach and then…I just snapped. Everything was becoming too much and all I wanted to do was leave, quit. It had been brewing for months before and that’s why…I lashed out at Christmas and the things I said to Kay, I’m…God. I’m so ashamed. I called. Did they tell you? I called and apologized.” He takes deep breath and shakes his head, getting back to his explanation. “So I _did_ and there was so much yelling and breaking things and he threatened my parents and you again and I punched him. I just…I punched him and slammed him against the wall and said that if he came near any of you, I would destroy him. You don’t know Snoke. If he couldn’t have me, he didn’t want _anyone_ to have me and I wanted so desperately to be _myself_ again. To try and find the person I wanted to be. So I left. I burned almost all of the bridges at the firm and I left and you had your life ahead of you and I didn’t know what I would be like, all I could feel was this intense darkness swallowing me whole and I didn’t want that for you.”

“So you left.” Rey finishes.

He nods. “I left. I called my mother and she told me I could use their lake house.”

“I thought you _rented_ that lake house.”

He shakes his head and gives her a small smile. “No. It’s family property. But I was up there for a while, trying to just collect myself and then I knew I wanted to bring Snoke and Palpatine down and I spent _months_ collecting everything. Hux, Baz and Phasma would feed me information, they would send me things and transcribe everything that would help build a case against them and we did it. We nailed them.”

“You told Hux to tell me you were _done_ with me.” Her hands are shaking. “You…God, Ben. You _broke_ me and for _what_? Because you wouldn’t tell me what was happening? I would have _helped_ you.”

“I didn’t want you to.” The words are blunt and to the point and they hurt more than anything she’s ever heard in her life. His eyes widen and he shakes his head, hefting off the armchair and coming to kneel in front of her. He grabs her hands that are clenched into fists on her lap. “That’s not what I meant. I knew that if I asked, you would. You would help me without any thought of yourself, of your future but I needed…I needed to do this by myself, for myself. Even getting Hux, Baz and Phasma involved wasn’t something I wanted to do but I needed the information.” He smooths his thumb over her pulse point, back and forth in a soothing motion. “I listened to them. Your voicemails.”

Rey lets out a little groan. “Christ. Some of them were really mean.”

He gives her a half smile, a little uptick of his lips. “I deserved them.” He stands up, knees cracking and looks down at her. “You’re _everything_ to me, Rey. I wanted to be the best version of myself for you and I couldn’t drag you into the dark with me. You’re…you’re like a real life ray of sunshine and I couldn’t let my obsession with being free, with destroying the man who made me who I am, deplete you of that. So I thought, if I just cut you off, like some twisted version of a limb, I could concentrate on doing what I needed to do.”

She purses her lips. “Looks like that worked.”

“No.” He breathes out. It sounds so pained, as if the memories of him being alone absolutely wrecks him. He gives her a watery smile. “Turns out, you’re not a limb. You’re my entire being. And I get it. I have no right to know anything about your life, I have no say in it, I just…I want you to be happy and if that’s with someone else, I’ll understand. I’ll back off. I’ll…”

She stands up in a hurry, hands on her hips. “Why are you still going on about me seeing someone? I’m not seeing anyone.”

“That guy on Christmas, on the wharf. I…I came by on Christmas. I wanted…I wanted to spend Christmas with you. I wanted to be with you because the last couple of Christmas’ were really horrible and all I wanted was to be near you but you were at the wharf with that guy-”

Everything becomes clear and Rey can’t help but laugh and laugh and laugh. “ _Snap_?” She says breathlessly. “You saw me with Snap. He’s my friend. Kind of like a brother, really. Besides, he asked me to introduce him to Kaydel. He’s not…we’re _not_ seeing each other.” She gives him a shrug. “I haven’t…it’s only been you…there hasn’t…I couldn’t.” She can’t get the words out to tell him that no matter what, no matter the amount of blind dates she went on, nothing lasted past the first date because they _weren’t him._

“I love you.” Rey says, closing her eyes. “I did then, I do now, I always will, I think.” She fists handfuls of her sweatpants. “And you? Did you…was there…” She breaks off, unable to finish the sentence, unable to finish the thought. She keeps her eyes closed because she doesn’t think she can look at him when he answers. She thinks she’s too terrified of the answer.

She only opens her eyes when she feels hands on her face. He’s there, in her personal space, eyes alight with joy and face morphed into an expression of relief. “ _You_.” He confesses, his voice soft, nose brushing against hers. “It’s you. It’s always been you. It always will be you. I love you. I love you. _I love you_.”

Rey’s lips tremble and her arms come up, hands gripping his elbows, keeping him place. “Don’t…don’t pretend with me, please. I can’t…Ben. I can’t go through that again.”

“Rey,” there is a kiss on her nose. “I love you.”

And then he kisses her and Rey doesn’t know what day it is, she doesn’t know what time it is, she doesn’t know what the weather is like, she doesn’t know anything other than what this feels like.

_Home_.

* * *

It’s not easy. It was never going to be easy. They get into arguments, sometimes loud arguments but he never walks out. He stews on the couch or she’ll slouch in the armchair and then they’ll breathe in and out and sometimes they’ll talk about it, sometimes they’ll pretend the fight never happened, sometimes they make up in other ways that has her curling her toes.

She calls Jyn and tells her everything. Jyn is reserved but she wants her happy. She also said that she has no problem flying over and actually punching him if he ever does something stupid like that again.

Leia gives them a secret smile.

Rose whoops and then punches Ben in the arm, finger pointed in his direction and threatens him within an inch of his life.

Rey laughs throughout it all.

Hux preens, proud of Rose, no matter how vividly she describes the things she’ll make him go through if he ever breaks Rey’s heart again.

“Breaking her heart means breaking mine and I don’t have any interest in making us go through that type of pain again.” He isn’t looking at Rose when he says this. Instead, he looks at Rey, ensuring his words find their target.

When Ben, (not Kylo, _Ben_ ), promises something, he promises it with intent.

And Rey finds that she believes him.

She’s staying at his place one night, tracing shapes on his chest when she props her head on his shoulder. “Would you still have come here? When everything was said and done and you were free, would you have always made your way back here? To your parents?”

Ben frowns and looks down at her, maneuvering them until she’s beneath him. He rests his elbows by her head, caging her in. “I didn’t come here for my parents.”

“Then why?”

He bends forward, lips catching hers. “You, Rey. I came here for you. I came back for you.”

* * *

By the time she walks down the aisle to meet Ben who is looking at her with tears in his eyes, it’s been already been a decade.

She met Kylo Ren before she met Ben Solo.

They’re the same man and she thought there was a time when she hated both of them.

Until she didn’t.

At their Reception, she has a mouth full of cake and she’s leaning into Ben who has his arm wrapped around her, lips pressed against her temple.

Their friends are drunk, Baz is arguing with Phasma that she wants to move to the West Coast _because everyone they love is here and I deserve the sun more than they do, so we’re moving._ Phasma nods with a soft smile, humouring her wife but Rey knows from Ben that Phasma already accepted a job offer with one of more well-known firms here, so it’ll only be a matter of time before everyone is back together again. 

Rose is asleep in Hux’s lap, the latter smoothing her hair.

Snap is making out with Kaydel in the corner.

Paige is drinking Jyn and Bodhi under the table, while Kay and Cassian look on with humour. Baze and Chirrut are providing commentary.

Finn and Poe are dancing on the dance floor.

Han and his friends are playing poker at one of the back tables.

Leia is rolling her eyes but secretly sending signals to her husband about who has what cards until Lando catches her cheating and they all start arguing with each other.

She nudges her husband (and _wow_ , _okay_ , she’s definitely going to have to get used to saying that) in the side. “Can you believe that we almost didn’t have it all?”

He presses another kiss to her temple and holds her closer to him until Rey doesn’t know where she begins and he ends. “And now we can have everything.”

“Everything, hm?” Rey murmurs. “I like the sound of that.”

And she does. She really, truly does.

* * *

The day after their wedding, she wakes up and finds Ben with the day’s newspaper propped on his knees and doing the crossword.

“Hey,” he says softly, once he notices that she’s awake. “24 down, ‘ _forever and ever, 6 letters.’_ ”

Rey smiles and props herself up, leaning her head against his shoulder, looking down at the words before her. It’s the last word he needs to complete puzzle and she wonders how long he’s been up to complete it. But he needs the _one_ word. Rey feels the smile etch into a grin and she huffs out a laugh. “ _Always_.” She says. “Try _always_.”

He does and it fits.

* * *

Throughout the years, they almost didn’t make.

( _Almost_.)

And then they did.

**Author's Note:**

> HEA will come! I swears it! I really really hope you enjoyed it and that you don’t hate me too much. Mad love and appreciation for every single one of you. I hope everyone is keeping healthy and safe.


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